tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28102666.post4175688342655831686..comments2016-12-08T11:10:00.186-05:00Comments on Boston 1775: King Street on the 5th of March 1770J. L. Bellnoreply@blogger.comBlogger11125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28102666.post-65702580890025097242011-04-08T20:45:07.254-05:002011-04-08T20:45:07.254-05:00Samuel Adams was probably at the same club that Jo...Samuel Adams was probably at the same club that John Adams attended that night. William Molineux was definitely at John Rowe’s club for at least part of the night. Dr. Thomas Young was recognized elsewhere. <br /><br />What that man reportedly told the crowd was rather unexceptional for Boston Whigs, so there’s a wide range of possibilities.J. L. Bellhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15405157000473731801noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28102666.post-61983429483672643292011-04-08T20:25:24.568-05:002011-04-08T20:25:24.568-05:00Who do you think was the man with the red cloak an...Who do you think was the man with the red cloak and white wig in Dock Square? If you had to guess which SoL it was, who would you say?Fred Gooltzhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15452134824863899983noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28102666.post-38273008679034054322007-03-07T13:58:00.000-05:002007-03-07T13:58:00.000-05:00J.L. hits my point: in a small community, 5 peopl...J.L. hits my point: in a small community, 5 people killed, especially given the circumstances, would feel like a massacre. The idea that this can be dismissed as something small because there were a score of wounds and five dead seems to be bringing a 21st century perspective to the Boston Massacre.Charles Swifthttp://bostonhistory.typepad.comnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28102666.post-45267378205396212222007-03-05T23:47:00.000-05:002007-03-05T23:47:00.000-05:00The comparison to Kent State is a resonant one, es...The comparison to Kent State is a resonant one, especially since the events occurred 200 years apart. The death tolls were similar, and both shootings followed a series of larger political confrontations.<BR/><BR/>At Kent State, however, the soldiers (National Guardsmen) were well out of harm's way when they shot at the crowd, many yards away. Only a minority of those men fired their weapons, but since there were many more of them that produced many more shots (67). <BR/><BR/>In Boston, the soldiers were tried by the end of the year—an unusually long process for that time. Two were convicted of manslaughter, the rest acquitted. In Ohio, eight guardsmen were indicted, but a judge dismissed the criminal case against them four years later.J. L. Bellhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15405157000473731801noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28102666.post-90739798464485981862007-03-05T22:23:00.000-05:002007-03-05T22:23:00.000-05:00For me, the question of proportionality is not a m...For me, the question of proportionality is not a matter of justifying the label of "massacre" but understanding why people then felt that term was appropriate. <BR/><BR/>Boston was a small community by modern standards, and thus reacted as small communities do. Five people meeting sudden violent deaths in a town of 15,000 people felt huge. Everyone was likely to know the victims, or their families, or someone who'd seen the event. Similarly, when there was suddenly one soldier in town for every two adult men, that felt like an awful lot of soldiers.<BR/><BR/>Of course, the epidemics that killed scores of people then were even more huge. And Boston, though it was the third largest town/city in North America, was a smaller fraction of the Massachusetts population than it is today. <BR/><BR/>Boston wasn't just a trading center for farmers and fishermen. It also had a large community of craftsmen, merchants, and professionals. People could make a good living there without having to work the land or go to sea. Indeed, it's thought that Samuel Adams may never have spent a night outside Boston between earning his master's degree from Harvard and going to the First Continental Congress.J. L. Bellhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15405157000473731801noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28102666.post-77252474996017826022007-03-05T21:58:00.000-05:002007-03-05T21:58:00.000-05:00I don't go along with the percentage of population...I don't go along with the percentage of population arguments I've seen recently, that 5 people then was equivalent to 180 now, or that England had the equivalent to 50,000 troops barracked in Boston. <BR/><BR/>You could similarly extrapolate to say even 1 person being killed was a massacre, it's the equivalent to 40 people dying in modern Boston! Or in modern cities, that one person in Lynchburg, Tennessee is equivalent to 1,500 people in New York City.<BR/><BR/>Also, I'm guessing Boston was largely the trading center for farmers and fishermen who lived elsewhere; the population distribution doesn't compare.Jeff Rutschhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09331851650239624247noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28102666.post-53488378395888762182007-03-05T17:13:00.000-05:002007-03-05T17:13:00.000-05:00However, wouldn't it be fair to say that the term ...<I>However, wouldn't it be fair to say that the term "massacre" was a propaganda tool? I mean, a dozen wounds and a few dead, tragic as it may be, is hardly a massacre.</I><BR/><BR/>Well, how does US history view other such situations where civil unrest ends with soldiers shooting civilians? Kent State? Others?SwirlyGrrlnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28102666.post-20310660350804338662007-03-05T12:59:00.000-05:002007-03-05T12:59:00.000-05:00I always enjoy this blog's method of discussing hi...I always enjoy this blog's method of discussing history, and I think these last few updates have been the best yet.Jeff Rutschhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09331851650239624247noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28102666.post-81775091563115403382007-03-05T12:34:00.000-05:002007-03-05T12:34:00.000-05:00As to the idea that this wasn't a massacre, if you...As to the idea that this wasn't a massacre, if you were to have a similar number of people killed in Boston today, given relative population sizes, the death toll would be close to 200 hundred people.Charles Swifthttp://bostonhistory.typepad.comnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28102666.post-43417135890526219962007-03-05T12:30:00.000-05:002007-03-05T12:30:00.000-05:00We can't know about how things might have been dif...We can't know about how things might have been different, of course, since we don't get "do-overs" in real life. But I think that different actions by Goldfinch, Garrick, and White might have avoided a fatal confrontation that night. <BR/><BR/>Would there soon have been another fatal conflict on another night? Soldiers and locals had been fighting off and on since late 1768. A soldier's gun had gone off (probably by accident) during one riot the previous fall. But no one had died in those battles. The British authorities had perceived the situation improving enough for them to remove two of the four regiments initially sent to Boston. <BR/><BR/>So it's conceivable that the situation would have continued at that lower level of conflict for a while: arguments, brawls, but no deaths. The Whigs would have focused all their energies on the trial of Ebenezer Richardson and the nonimportation boycott.<BR/><BR/>How many more months could that have lasted? By coincidence, just a few hours before the Massacre, the government in London had introduced legislation to repeal the Townshend duties on all but tea. Tea was still the most important of the taxed commodities, but that concession might have led to a calmer political climate.<BR/><BR/>The real problem for the Crown was that the presence of troops in central Boston inflamed people who ordinarily wouldn't have been politically active. In the wake of the Massacre, the army moved to Castle Island. That left the Customs service less protection, and Whig crowds ruled the streets for several months. But by 1771, the town had calmed down. The Whigs' tea boycott was tepid. Imports zoomed up. There were no riots. Gov. Hutchinson even thought he was enticing John Hancock away from Samuel Adams. So if the Crown had been willing to remove the troops before fatal violence, the town might have calmed down even more quickly. But, as I said above, we'll never know.<BR/><BR/>As for the term "massacre," that was undoubtedly chosen for its incendiary effect. Similarly, a British pamphlet on the event called in "the late unhappy disturbance"—propaganda from the opposite direction. I discuss what the Massacre meant to locals further in <A HREF="http://boston1775.blogspot.com/2006/06/boston-massacre-really-massacre.html" REL="nofollow">Boston Massacre: really a "massacre"?</A>.J. L. Bellhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15405157000473731801noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28102666.post-28741468064538409812007-03-05T01:50:00.000-05:002007-03-05T01:50:00.000-05:00I doubt this was unavoidable. Had it not been a wi...I doubt this was unavoidable. Had it not been a wig receipt, it would have been something else.<BR/><BR/>However, wouldn't it be fair to say that the term "massacre" was a propaganda tool? I mean, a dozen wounds and a few dead, tragic as it may be, is hardly a massacre.Robert S. Paulhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06208771657848284055noreply@blogger.com